Saturday, 16 May 2015

64,000 Film Cans

Two posts today, I really am spoiling you. I gave a lot of thought to what I was going to post but then realised it was all bollocks and posted this instead. A few people have said on very occasions this past month or so, "Have you found anything in your research that proves the Omnirumour?" Of course, the answer to this is no. Only one thing would prove the existence of more episodes and that is a clip of the episode itself. Although some would still claim that only the clip itself had been found. If a clip had surfaced somewhere nobody would dare post it as that could cause all sorts of potential problems or delays.

My personal paradigm is to try and disprove the most suspect rumours in order to sort the wheat from the chaff as it were. That which can't be disproved I then consider whether I personally believe it and there is a lot if you look that can't be disproved. So I see no need to be glum.

One thing that I think has been disproved is the notion of a TIE hub. It makes no sense logistically to insert an extra node into an ad-hoc distribution topology that already has plenty of redundancy. The costs of maintaining a facility and the return to the hub make economically unsound. Especially when there are statements like this one to consider:

As far as I can ascertain that is from early 1964 so there was plenty of time for things to change although I see no reason to suggest that TIE would suddenly switch from moving things from station to station as required to adopting such a nonsensical business model. Of course, there is always that blind spot. That unknown variable that we just can't predict or compensate for. I have been wrong before and will surely be so again but there is little that can be done about that. We don't always get to make decisions knowing all there is to know. Often we have to make choices without all the available information. If somebody said to you that your house was burning down would you demand proof or go back and check on your house? At the end of the day, nothing is lost through daring to be wrong.

So what rumours do I think are credible? Well, the idea that 90 out of what was at the time 106 missing episodes being found is on the face of it rather borderline and considering how poorly Power of the Daleks and Evil of the Daleks were known to have sold then something rather unlikely has to have happened. So sticking to just the highly likely certainly isn't going to give us the full picture but for me it cannot be satisfactorily disproved.

I also find the high number of film cans and tapes (let's say 64,000 with a 54,000/10,000 split in favour of film prints) plausible. I also find the idea that it could all be British material plausible. Although I think the majority would be ITV material and not missing, then there are dupes to consider but the thing that amazes me about this one is the people are so keen to ignore the context of the 64,000 number. Finds in Australia and Hong Kong I also think are highly probable, although Australia would probably only yield a couple of stories at most and most likely from a private collector. Anyway, there are three rumours there and I am sure I could find more, such as anything Anneke Wills says for one.

So is not knowing a blessing or a curse? Probably a bit of both to be honest but I am as upbeat as ever. Don't get me wrong there are plenty of times I yearn for this to be over and one day it will but I am digressing. The point of all this is that some people I have spoken to have become increasingly frustrated at the lack of evidence whereas I see it as hope. Not being able to prove something is not necessarily such a burden.